Tuesday, December 16, 2008

US to Unveil Court Rulings Against Nazis

From the Jerusalem Post:

The US Justice Department's criminal division, which deals with cases of Nazis who entered the United States after the Holocaust, is set to make public three decades of American court decisions against dozens of Nazi war criminals, Yad Vashem announced Monday.

The vast legal material that is slated to be published in the coming months and which includes nearly 100 cases against Nazi war criminals living in the US over the last 30 years is one of the largest contemporary sources of material in English about the trials of Nazis.

The US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, which handles cases against people accused of being former Nazis, began operations in 1979.

It has successfully prosecuted more than 100 participants in Nazi crimes.

The material, which will be published in only three sets of multi-volume book-form, will be presented to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, as well as to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, while the final copy will be retained by the US Justice Ministry.

"This is one of the leading institutions in the world for compiling cases against suspected Nazi war criminals," said Dr Haim Gertner, Director of the Yad Vashem Archives. He added that some of the more low profile cases were never officially published before, and that the material would be of interest to scholars and historians, as well as the public at large.